"We also haven’t found any connection between the remotes and your friend’s murder. We were interested in hearing what your analysis has uncovered, Mr. Journey.”
Matt ground his teeth every time Edones used the condescending phrase "Mr. Journey,” but it was better than some other addresses he could think of. He didn’t want to admit that he hadn’t started going through the LEF data.
"I was looking through Nestor’s last set of research, trying to find any motives for his murder,” Matt said.
"And did you?”
"Not really,” Matt muttered.
"While you’ve been napping, Sergeant Joyce was doing real detective work. He’s finished the tedious job of identifying everyone, through ComNet, who was near the flat entrance shortly before Mr. Expedition’s murder. The entrance is recessed, as you know, and there isn’t accurate node coverage, probably by design. Despite that, we’ve got a section of ten meters on either side that we can use. With a narrow window of time, we’ve got over a hundred names and none of these names can be connected to your list of bidders.”
Joyce had been doing what Matt had avoided, for personal reasons. He nodded toward Joyce, hoping that it’d be taken as thanks. Edones displayed a list of names.
"Just because there’s no match to a bidder doesn’t mean that you won’t recognize someone from this node coverage. Do you know any of these names, Mr. Journey?”
Matt watched the names scroll down the wall. "No.”
"We sliced the list based on background. We’re going to go through every slice, with the best facial view caught on ComNet. Here’s the slice for visitors and nonresidents of Athens Point. See if you recognize anyone.”
Matt watched about fifteen faces, names, and occupations flash by. He shook his head.
"People employed by independent services or the entertainment industry.”
About twenty faces this time and Matt still shook his head. "Nope, don’t recognize anybody.”
"All people associated with Athens Point operations.”
Matt shook his head. They went through two more slices and Matt didn’t recognize anyone.
"Last slice. Government contractors and employees.”
More faces.
"Wait! Go back!” Matt’s eyes widened.
There, about one block from Nestor’s flat, was temperamental Mr. Customs. His real name was Hektor Valdes.
"You initially mentioned corruption inside Athens Point Customs,” Edones said. "Do you have proof of illicit dealings? How do you know this man?”
"Valdes was the customs inspector when we last docked,” Matt said. "He and I had an—er—an altercation.”
Edones’s eyebrows went up and Matt had to explain the entire conversation. The argument ended up sounding childish and irrelevant, even to Matt.
"I guess he had some past problem with second-wave prospectors,” Matt finished lamely.
"And his bad humor was an indication that he was on the take?” Edones asked.
"No, Nestor told me about it. He said many of the officials received payments for something. The payments were small, so he thought it was for information. I asked him to look into it for me.”
This might be the reason Nestor was killed. Matt thought about the package titled "Customs.” He didn’t want to hand it over to Edones until he’d gone over it himself. If there was something that didn’t reflect well upon Nestor, he wanted a chance to filter it.
"This is enough to get the LEF going again. They’re stymied by dead ends.” Edones cleared the display and turned around, leaning back and crossing his arms. "I’ve done my part of our agreement; it’s time to sign over your leases.”
"I’d rather wait for some results. This inspector may not be guilty of anything, other than being obnoxious,” Matt said. "I also need time to plow through Nestor’s will and records.”
"I’ve done my side of this bargain, Mr. Journey.”
"Doesn’t this all seem a little too neat and clean? We haven’t got any motive. Then there’s the question whether Athens Point LEF has the backbone to investigate the Customs Department.”
"I can’t influence the Athens Point LEF.”
"Besides, there’re too many other things that don’t make sense.” Matt leaned forward. "In particular, Ari’s strange background.”
Edones shrugged, his face blank.
Matt pressed on. "Look, I don’t know how it was done, but I can tell that her history, perhaps her identity, has been altered.”
"Crystal doesn’t lie. And the government can’t keep secrets—it’s too big and inept.”
"It doesn’t have to. A small task force, working secretly, some time around the year 2090, could keep a lot of secrets. Particularly while everyone’s attention was riveted on peace negotiations.” Matt kept his voice casual, his fingers kneading the arm of the chair.
"You’re speculating. What’s in crystal is accepted as truth and I’ll defend the data to my dying day.” Edones sighed. "However, such defense may soon be moot. We’ve received the casualty report from Karthage.”
Matt had already received a message from Ari, so he knew she’d survived without injuries. She probably wasn’t supposed to be dropping him messages, anonymous or not, so he tried to look concerned. His acting abilities weren’t the best, but then, Edones hadn’t confirmed that Ari was even on Karthage.
"Is Ari all right?” When Edones lifted an eyebrow at his question, Matt added, "Look, I already know she’s on Karthage Point.”
"Don’t worry, Mr. Journey. She’s probably fine, although I haven’t received a report from her recently.” Edones’s smile was coldly impersonal and not reassuring. "However, the explosion got another one of my protected flock.”
Matt realized the implications of Edones’s words.
"She’s in danger.” None of this sounded, or felt, real.
"I’ve known Major Kedros a lot longer than you, Mr. Journey. I expect she’s well aware of any danger.”
"Did you expect this?” Matt clenched his jaw. He felt adrift; this conversation had depths beyond his knowledge.
"She knew the risks when she accepted the orders. Yes?”
Edones looked over Matt’s shoulder. Matt turned to see Sergeant Joyce turning up his ear bug while making a vague motion. He was receiving a private message.
"New message from Karthage CP, sir. The baseline inspection was completed successfully, with an on-site Minoan observer. The Terran inspectors left three hours ago. And, specifically addressed to the supervisor of Major Kedros”—Joyce frowned—"the Orderly Room has declared Major Kedros AWOL. Missing and assumed to have left the station without leave.”
Matt quickly faced Edones.
"That can’t be true.” Matt’s words came out in a rush. "She’d never abandon her post. Ari’s a stickler for performing her duty.”
"Well, that’s one thing we agree upon.” Edones began to drum the top of his shiny desk with his perfectly manicured fingertips.
"You remember Ura-Guinn?” Brandon’s eyes were darker than she remembered. Angry. He had been angry. After the mission.
Where have you been? she wanted to ask, but her mouth was numb, her tongue inert.
"Was it just our crew? Blowing away a system without authorization—who else was in on it?”
"No.” She tried to shake her head. Couldn’t.
That’s not how it happened. The memory filled her mind; she saw Brandon striding through the hallways of Thera Point, home to two Naga Strike Squadrons under the Fourteenth Strategic Systems Wing.
Brandon’s temper was infamous. Ari tried to keep abreast of her furious crew commander, dancing sideways as well as she could under station-g. Behind them, Cipher shuffled along solidly but she looked dazed.
"Be careful, Brandon,” said Ari. "Don’t do anything stupid. They didn’t trust us with the truth, but at least we got back all right.”
Brandon stopped abruptly and turned to her. He reached toward her temple and when he pulled back his hand, he held
a chunk of her loose curls.
"This is all right?” He thrust the hair toward Ari and she recoiled, her hand flying to her scalp. "They should have told us the payload was real and they were blowing the weapons’ facility, so we could do our mission the way we trained. They should have warned us to dose ourselves and drop out of normal space sooner, but they didn’t! We were disposable. Expendable.”
"We’re crew. We followed orders.” Ari flinched as he scowled and resumed his march toward the Operations Center. She touched her temple gently and dislodged more hair. She’d pushed through nightmarish N-space without drugs, an experience that could cause disassociative insanity. She’d be under medical supervision and intravenous nutrition for days.
Ari stopped walking. She looked despairingly at Cipher. "He’ll ruin his career.”
"We just destroyed an entire solar system, Ari. I don’t think he’s worried about his career.” Cipher’s eyes were dull.
"No, he’s thinking about his crew, even if he’s being unprofessional about it. Cipher, get a grip on yourself.” Ari grabbed Cipher’s arm.
"What about the civilians on that colony? Doesn’t this violate the Phaistos Protocols?” Cipher’s dark eyes blazed and she pulled away.
"I don’t know. All I know is that we did what we were ordered to do, and by Gaia, I got us back alive.” Ari was exhausted, her knees and legs beginning to quiver as if they’d give out at any moment.
Shouting and thumping spouted out of the Ops Center. Ari and Cipher rushed into Ops to find Brandon trying to throttle the director of operations—he leapt the chain of command, ignoring the squadron commander and attacking the Wing DO. The squadron commander stood watching with a bloodless face, not moving. Everyone looked shocked and frozen, so Ari and Cipher worked alone to pull their crew commander off the DO.
"I didn’t sign up for suicide missions—neither did my crew.” Brandon’s voice sputtered. He lost his breath and let them push him against the wall, where he slumped.
"Captain, no one in squadron ops was told this was anything other than a fancy recon mission. We didn’t have advance warning.” The squadron commander’s face was still drawn. "We thought you were lost with the other ships that were transitioning. You’ve got your pilot to thank for that.” He nodded at Ari. "Good work, Lieutenant.”
Ari put it down to dumb luck. She’d dropped them out of real-space before the TD wave destroyed the Ura-Guinn buoy. They had fully transitioned to N-SPACE before the destruction of the time buoy caused a "glitch” to shudder through the buoy network, losing anyone in direct transition.
"A ship from the Directorate of Intelligence is docking. Apparently they intend to debrief us.” The DO gave Brandon a dark look. "We’ll talk about insubordination charges later, Captain.”
Suddenly she and Brandon were alone. He looked older. Different place, different time?
"We violated the Phaistos Protocols, didn’t we?”
Her mouth worked, twisting and fighting her. "No.”
Brandon’s eyes darkened. His face became sharper.
"Valid orders.” She couldn’t make her mouth work right, not without his command.
His lips curled back from his teeth. Brandon melted into Nathaniel Wolf Kim. His eye was blackened, and one side of his face bruised and swollen. She remembered doing that with a well-aimed kick. Her head restrained, she slid her gaze from side to side to see gray walls and the familiar shape of a hatch on a ship. Kim stood in front of her and he jerked his head sideways to talk to someone.
"You’ve got to keep her under,” Kim said.
"I can’t give her any more. The problem is her ultrarapid metabolism. We’ll have to recalculate the safety margin.”
"No, the problem is that I haven’t any neural probes. Guess I’ll have to get physical.” Nathaniel Wolf Kim smiled. "I’m going to enjoy this.”
CHAPTER 16
Since its inception, the Phaistos Protocol has governed wartime prisoner interrogation. It only protects lawful combatants and civilians [see Minoans Define Anarchists as Subhuman], and obedience to the Protocol rests upon faith in reciprocity from one’s enemy, as well as fear of Minoan retribution. Nevertheless, Terran Intelligence tortured AFCAW prisoners during the war in ways that went unnoticed by Minoan observers. Consider the challenges: No physical marks could be left on victims, modern use of bright made sleep deprivation techniques obvious and time-consuming, while claustrophobic environments are ineffective against anyone trained to pilot N-space. . . .
—Modern-Day Torture, Zacharias Milano, 2097.363.11.00 UT, indexed by Heraclitus 23 under Conflict Imperative
Darkness. Pain. Needles dragged along her skin and peeled her raw. She writhed as the pain forced its way under her fingernails, tearing them away. It’s not real. Only pain-enhancing drugs. She panted as the pain faded, but she knew that it would come again at some random moment. Uncertainty is the interrogator’s friend. She shrieked at the sensations when they battered her again.
Then her hood was ripped off and she was blinded by light. Nathaniel Wolf Kim’s face hovered, barely discerned through her streaming eyes.
"There’s no one here but you and me,” he said. "No one is going to rescue you.”
"Ariane Kedros,” she whispered. This time they weren’t trying to control her will and she could talk. "Major in the Armed Forces for—”
"Major Kedros is listed as AWOL. No one will come for her. Besides, you’re not Major Kedros. You don’t exist. What’s your real name?”
She felt the effects of another drug being pumped into her bloodstream. Kim’s face distorted and her heart pounded. Shadows crawled and twisted around him. Shades of N-space terrors that she couldn’t quite remember.
"Four billion people gone,” he said. "That’s genocide. Slaughter. Butchery.” Rage poured from his mouth and his eyes.
"I followed orders,” she said.
"There were no orders.” He slapped her face hard. Again and again. She tasted, swallowed blood. She was strapped into a slanted table and couldn’t move her head. Every time his arm drew back, she twitched in agony, trying to dodge.
"You had no orders. Admit it, you’re a war criminal.” His voice sounded on the edge of insanity.
"Authorized.”
"Your military crew went rogue.”
"No. Did my duty.” She coughed. Maybe she’d drown in the blood running down her throat.
He hit her again.
It had been six hours since Maria and Nathan had sabotaged the MilNet nodes and kidnapped Major Kedros. Maria had devised a clever method for getting Kedros off Karthage, although she had to give up the ventilator that allowed her to sleep. During that time, Isrid was involved with the signing of treaty paperwork, the departure, and getting the ship under way in such a public fashion that he could deny ever knowing what, or who, had been stowed in one of the lowest-level storage holds.
Now he was free to view Nathan’s handiwork.
"I didn’t authorize physical torture,” said Isrid, tearing his gaze away. He saw Maria watching the video with an absorption combined of revulsion and fascination.
"The subject is extraordinarily resistant to will-power inhibitors, perception distorters, drug-induced pain, and she’s an N-space pilot who’s had a recent drop. I had to step things up.” Nathan shrugged and looked perplexed. "I assumed that we needed a breakdown, as soon as possible, for a public statement of guilt.”
Isrid understood Nathan’s confusion. Since when did his staff need authorization for physical torture? During the war, Isrid condoned whatever it took to break the subject and achieve the goal or intelligence. But the war’s been over for fifteen years, nagged an inner voice.
Maria looked puzzled also. A hand splint, necessary to support small bone growth stimulation, hampered her somaural communication.
Isrid felt out of step with Nathan. He still burned for revenge but his feelings felt shallow beside Nathan’s. In addition to plain old anger, Nathan could draw from a sadistic streak that had st
rengthened over time. Fifteen years, however, had left its mark on Isrid and he couldn’t watch this interrogation with cold objectivity. For the first time, he felt a certain . . . distaste.
Nathaniel Wolf Kim moved out of Ariane’s sight, which gave her a small respite. When he returned, he held a baton or club, thin enough to wrap his hand around. He held it up in front of her eyes.
"You can save yourself if you’ll give us a public statement. It can be short; all you need to do is admit that you violated the Phaistos Protocol.”
"No.”
He tapped her solar plexus sharply and knocked the breath out of her.
The constraints didn’t allow her to shake her head. He drew his baton back again and she panicked, trying to speak, trying to wheeze the words out. "No. Had—valid release orders. You want—kill me. Jus—justify it.”
Kim cocked his head, his eyes narrowing. "Four billion people gone. Don’t you deserve to die?”
She didn’t answer. He drew his arm back slowly and she waited for an agonizing moment. Pain exploded below her knees and her sight faded into whiteness.
Isrid closed his eyes. Even though he told himself that the subject was the enemy, his emotional self reacted to a large man whacking a young woman across the shins with a bat. Why was this bothering him? He’d seen much worse, done much worse, during the war. Perhaps he’d become weak; perhaps he’d changed because of marriage and children. He now had two adolescent daughters by Garnet, who didn’t look much younger than Major Kedros—the enemy, the subject.
"I cracked one of her bones but I thought I’d show you the progress, SP.”
The satisfaction in Nathan’s voice made Isrid’s stomach clench, but he wasn’t a somaural master for nothing. He hid his reaction.
"Did you get the doc in?” Isrid asked flatly.
Peacekeeper Page 20
